5 Tips for Running a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

What are the best ways to run a successful crowdfunding campaign? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Jessica Alter, co-founder of Tech for Campaigns, Entrepreneur, on Quora:

All of my experience comes from running our TFC crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, so I’ll just caveat that I’ve only run one.

Some major lessons or must-knows when running a crowdfunding campaign

1. A lot of work happens upfront. From pre-committing donors, to selecting a platform, to building your email lists, to getting video and creative assets together. You need six to eight weeks minimum to do it correctly. Crowdfunding, especially the first time, is an incredible amount of work.
2. The platform you choose matters. Take time to really research which crowdfunding platform (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Crowdrise, etc) is best. Don’t only talk to the teams there, but also talk to people who have run crowdfunding campaigns on that platform. It’s sort of like selecting investors, you want to talk to people they’ve backed that have been successful and those who haven’t. We certainly did this, but I wish we did more of it. We took certain things the platforms told us to be gospel and it turned out that was a mistake.
3. Lists, traffic, promotion. At the end of the day you need to commit the first 50% of your campaign goal on your own. The platforms will tell you 30%, but it’s 50%. This is your list. After that, when you look at which platform to choose, I’d suggest ranking them by a. How much traffic they get? b. How much promotion they will give you? How much traffic they get is far and away more important than the promotion because if they don’t have an active base the promotion won’t matter. You should also ask previous companies how valuable the promotion was.
4. Build in stories and promotion. Try to make every part of your campaign a story. From launching to the perks, to a donor that gave to you. Press will only cover launching and exceeding a goal so many times, so have stories to tell that aren’t just typical “we launched” and “we exceeded goal.”
5. Twitter is nice for hype, Facebook is good for donations. Twitter posting and sharing is nice for influencers and reporters to see your campaign, but as far as social networks go, it drives little in the way of donations. Facebook, is a much more effective and larger source of actual donations.

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